Youths. A pack of them, together in a room. Sitting, relaxing - smiles on most faces, though not all. Occasionally one would stand, walking to the adjoining room to pick up food or drink, then return to the group with it, either to consume alone or to share. The ones who smiled the most tended towards the centre of the group, talking animatedly, bursting into peals of laughter, eating and drinking the most. The others, the two loners of the group, stayed on the outskirts, but close enough to still be a part of the gathering. Those two stayed close to one another, each more interested in the thick sheafs of paper they held than their companions, but the occasional remark or chuckle indicated that they were still a part of the conversation.

They’d been like this for some time now. It was a routine, or perhaps a ritual, repeated every seven days. Some tended towards the same roles - the intriguingly bitter one with the long, black hair was always on the edge of the group, and the dull pink-edged-with-black haired one always part of the inner circle - but besides that, there was no clear pattern or intent behind their behaviour, just the simple repetition of an event. But the sun was setting now, and that meant they would soon go their separate ways. Some would remain in or near this building, others would travel for some time to reach a different home. The interesting ones would either remain or leave in groups, but one of the dull ones would travel alone.

It was reluctant to waste time and effort on such a bland specimen, but the watcher hadn’t survived this long by acting rashly or emotionally. In time, it would find its opening. For now, the blood and bone of the lone weakling would sate its hunger. Tongues moistened its lips as it watched the moon begin to rise. Soon.

Luke’s eyes were cold and impenetrable.

Or, well, cold was a bit rude. They were a dull blue-grey, so they were cold in the colour theory sense. Or maybe they were just grey, but his sky-blue hair made them look like they had a hint of blue? Colours could trick the eyes like that, or the part of the brain that interpreted what the eyes said at least. Anyway, he was a nice and friendly guy. Maybe cool and impenetrable was a better way to put it?

The point was, he was playing his cards close to his chest, metaphorically as well as literally. If I guessed wrong the game was over, but I just could not figure out what was in his hand.

“Is something wrong?”, he asked abruptly.

“What? No, it’s fine. Why?”

“Oh, okay. You were squinting, kind of?”

“I was giving you a shrewd and calculating look!”, I protested.

“Oh, is that what it was?”

“Shrewd as a shrew,” I told him sternly.

I looked to the others for support. We were spread across three big couches, all mismatched colours and a bit worn out, but in a way that made them feel soft and homey rather than ratty. Which was the feel of the whole room, it was some kind of unused staff room or something that we’d taken over for our ‘study group’ (or they’d taken over, really, I was a recent addition to the group). One room that was a little small with a low ceiling that had a few cobwebs in the corners, just enough space that it felt cozy instead of cramped, and a small adjoining ‘kitchen’ that had a sink, a microwave, a cupboard and a kettle.

Luke and I were on the two opposite couches, with a little circular coffee table kind of thing between them that was just a bit too small, so some of the cards were poking over the side. Alex and Gavin were on Luke’s couch, chatting with Grace (who had the small couch to herself for the moment, since Krystal was in the kitchen), while Charity sat beside me reading a book as usual. They weren’t actively part of the game or conversation I was having, but it was a small enough group that everyone overheard each other at least a little bit and could pop in at any time.

Grace noticed my silent cry for help. “Sorry sweetie,” she said. “Shrewd isn’t your thing.”

I made a show of pouting at this betrayal of my trust. She was right, though. Like it or not, I had a serious case of baby face. I got called cute or innocent a lot, but never shrewd. Maybe I could’ve changed that if I dressed all cool in black like Charity did, she had this whole goth witch aesthetic thing going on that looked great on her, but I was kinda scared to try it. I was all soft and round and, well, maybe a little overweight, while she was tall and thin and sharply angled, which meant her look probably wouldn’t work on me. At all. So I stuck to nice, plain dresses and tried to hide my chubby cheeks behind my hair as much as I could.

My pouting was real by now. I’d got myself all self-conscious. Back to the game, think about something else.

“An eight,” I declared, placing it down on the table (half on top of another card, but we could still see what they both were).

Luke’s eyes gleamed, and I knew right away that I’d made a mistake. But before he could do anything, Charity cut in, speaking without even looking up from her book.

“You can’t.”

“Huh?”, I asked.

“You can’t play an eight.”

“But he just played a six?”

“And what did you play last turn?”

I thought about it. After all that thinking and shrewding, it seemed like ages ago. “A two?”

“Right. So?”

“So… oh. So now it’s descending. Oops.”

“You’re welcome.” She still hadn’t taken her eyes off the book for a second.

I turned back to Luke. “Um, well, I guess I’ll play this instead, if that’s okay?” I gingerly picked the eight back up and placed a five down instead.

He looked at the five, at his hand, back to the five, back to his hand, then laid it flat out on the table, showing me he had nothing he could play. “You win,” he said, with just a teeny tiny hint of regret.

I smiled sheepishly. “Well, Charity won really. Want another game?”

He nodded, scooped up the cards and started shuffling.

Things started to wind down about twenty minutes later. Study group wasn’t a strictly scheduled kind of thing, Thursday afternoon just happened to be the one time we were all available, so we basically hung out until one or two people left, then everyone else started heading off too. Grace had just said she was leaving soon, since she had some shopping to do, and since she was the unofficially official leader of the group, her going meant everyone else went pretty soon. Luke and I had finished up tied 1-1 (with Charity on one point too), and I’d handed him my phone so he could look through my extensive collection of cute cat videos, since he was one of the only people who appreciated them as much as me. Almost as much.

I’d been just starting to think about leaving when I realised I should have left half an hour ago - it was my turn to cook dinner tonight. I’d hurriedly grabbed my stuff and jogged out the door, then after about five seconds of that I remembered that I hate jogging and settled for walking really determinedly instead.

At least it was a lovely day for a walk. There were things I missed about living in the city, but here in Summerview the air smelled clean and crisp, and there were trees along the sides of every street, raining beautiful autumn leaves across pretty much every bit of ground you could find. Right now the leaf carpet was almost thick enough to reach my ankles, so every step went crunch crunch crunch as I went. And everything was so wide open! It was a big change from catching a cramped city bus from school, having to get crammed in together with a hundred other noisy, pushy people and usually a creepy guy or two.

Like a lot of people who lived here, I came to Summerview for the university, which was rated one of the best in the country even though it was out in the middle of nowhere. Though unlike most other students, I still got to live with family while I was here. Dad had owned an investment property out here since forever, so when he and Mum got divorced a few years back, he moved into it. He spends a lot of time travelling for work (guess why they got divorced), but he was going to be here for the next month and a half, then after that I’d have a whole house to myself for a while and all I had to do was keep it clean and not break anything.

Even though I was running late, I had to stop to take a breather at the top of Halfway Hill. (That wasn’t its real name or anything, it was just halfway between home and campus, so that’s what I called it.) I knew all the walking had to be good for me, but I wasn’t used to it yet, so I was panting by the time I reached the top of the gentle but long incline, and even though it was dusk and the air was nice and cool, I had clumps of sweaty hair sticking to my scalp. Icky. My hair was really thick and curly, and I kinda liked how it looked usually, but it was a lot of work and got really bad when it was too hot.

A quick couple minutes leaning against a tree later, I got going again. I’d spotted a big, straight fallen stick further down and a bit off the path, so I went off track to pick it up, because how can you see a cool stick and not play with it? After crunching my way through a bunch more leaves, I found that it was just as smooth to the touch as it looked, with only a few little knobbly bits and one small curve in it. Good weight, too, and okay it was a little too big for me to gracefully hold in one hand, but it’s not like I was that graceful anyway, and, you know, cool stick. I gave it a few twists and whirls, and it even made a little whistling sound when I did. Just like…

Ah. Sad memories. Not painful any more, but still not something I wanted to poke around in. I lowered the stick and settled for swishing it through the leaves beside me while I walked.

A scream.

It jarred me out of that head-place right away. Not close enough to make me jump, but close enough to be startling. It was a woman’s, and I could feel in my gut that it was a bad scream.

I clenched up, a chill spreading through my veins. Should I do something? The scream came from the right, where there was a really big hill covered in trees. That hill overlooked most of Summerview’s suburban area, there were houses built close to its base, so someone else must have heard it too. I didn’t need to do anything, right?

But the sound of that scream was still ringing through my brain. It was raw, and it was terrified. I had butterflies in my stomach and a sick feeling in my throat just from hearing it.

But it was crazy for me to run off into the woods, alone and in the dark. How could I even help?

But how could I just go home and carry on with my evening after hearing that, and pretend that nothing had happened?

I don’t know how long I stood there, doing nothing. Then I realised how much of an idiot I was being. There was a third option, besides running off or doing nothing - call the cops. How did it take me so long to think of that? I reached into my bag and damn it my hands were shaking I couldn’t open it properly and if I just stopped to calm down and focus then I could open a stupid zipper but I was watching myself screw it up in slow motion and fast motion at the same time and I knew that I should be able to take control but I was completely on autopilot and why wouldn’t this stupid zipper just -

It opened. Finally. I took a ragged breath and reached inside to grab at thin air. My phone wasn’t there.

Before I could properly take that in, there was another scream. This time it was a word.

Morgan. My name.

That’s when it hit me. I hadn’t heard her scream before, so I hadn’t placed it until now, but I recognised the voice. It was Grace.

The fear didn’t go away, and my limbs didn’t un-freeze. But all of a sudden I had a certainty that was strong enough for me to push through it. We hadn’t known each other that long, we weren’t that close. But no matter what happened, no matter how stupid it was, I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. I couldn’t.

I think I screamed too. There was a tiny little part of my brain that was still switched on, telling me that if I made noise too, other people might investigate. Then I ran into the shadow of the trees, and there was only darkness, the crunch of each footstep, and the deafening thunder of my heart.

Every part of my body throbbed with exhaustion. I had no idea how long I’d been running, where I was, or where I was going. I knew my way around the woods by day, and I knew the general direction I’d heard the scream from, but because it was dark, or because I was panicking, or because of something else, nothing looked familiar. I was just running blindly, hoping that I wasn’t going in circles, hoping I wouldn’t trip or hurt myself some other way, and shouting out Grace’s name. If she was still conscious, she’d hear me eventually and respond, and then I’d know where to go. I just had to keep moving.

“Morgan!”

It came from behind me, not too far away. I must have run straight past her somehow. My throat ached from the effort of breathing, and my legs were wobbling under me, but I was close. No matter how much I needed to stop, I had to be there for her. Had to make it in time. Somehow I was still holding onto that stick - I hadn’t even realised I was carrying it until now, and my hand was so tight around it I probably wouldn’t have been able to drop it if I tried. I could use it now. I felt like I should have a second wind helping me run back to find Grace now that I’d heard her, but if anything the strength I had left had vanished, so I used the stick to keep myself upright as I hobbled as fast as I could back to her.

“Morgan? Is that you?” She was close now, just around another few trees.

“Grace! I’m here.” I clutched at my throat with my spare hand. Talking hurt even more than breathing.

“Morgan. I’m so glad you came.” I had to be hallucinating, or too tired to think straight, because this time she sounded totally normal. Calm, collected, everyday Grace.

I shook my head, throwing that thought out of it. No time to go crazy, I could hear how close she was. Just over this ridge. I took a shallow breath, and pushed myself one more time to make my way up the incline. And there…

Nothing. Darkness, underbrush, and nothing else. I fell onto my hands and knees as the last remnants of strength left me.

“Wow, I’m impressed. I didn’t think she’d be that stupid.”

Suddenly her tone was flat, bored. Wait. That wasn’t Grace. That was Charity speaking.

“It was bravery, not stupidity. She was trying to do something heroic, you don’t need to put people down for that, even if it doesn’t work.”

Now a man, deep and earnest. Luke.

“What.” I forced another breath into my lungs and looked around, straining to make anything out in the darkness. “What are you doing. Why.”

One by one, they began laughing. Then others voices joined in, gradually at first, then more and more until it all blurred together into one great cacophony. There couldn’t be that many people here!

“Please,” I begged. I didn’t even know what I was begging for.

The laughter stopped, so abruptly it almost made me jump. I braced myself for whatever was about to happen.

Silence.

I started to come back to my senses. I didn’t calm down, exactly, but I went from freezing up to knowing that I had to get up off the ground and try to get out of here. Then I heard it.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

A single set of rhythmic footsteps, making their way closer.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Whoever the hell was doing this, whatever was going on, I wasn’t going to just let it happen. They were too close for me to run, but I felt something new burning inside my chest. Anger. Had they gone to all the trouble of pretending to make friends with me, just so they could lure me out and screw with me? That was so twisted. The anger didn’t wash away the fear, but instead mixed with it, giving me the strength I needed to stand up again and pick my stick off the ground, grasping it in two trembling hands.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

The figure came into view from behind a tree, and my eyes went wide.

It wasn’t any of the study group people. It didn’t even look like it was human. I could only see a silhouette in the darkness, but it bulged in places no person should bulge, and its upper body was hunched and twisted in spine-breaking ways.

It stepped further forward, out from under the shadow of the tree, and I saw it illuminated in the moonlight.

A misshapen body, humanoid but in a totally deformed way, like a kid had tried to make a model of a person by grabbing a lump of playdoh and squeezing it in their fist until it was kind of the right shape. Its skin was dark and rubbery, unnaturally smooth in most places, but with patches of fur and feathers growing out of it in some others. Two of the fingers on its left hand looked like totally normal human fingers, fully detailed and realistic, except that their nails were each a foot long and razor-sharp, while all its other fingers were lumpy and half-formed like the rest of it. It had no eyes that I could see, no ears, nose or hair, but it had mouths.

Out of everything, the mouths were what I stared at. Its head, completely featureless in every other way, was a patchwork of mouths, all different sizes, hanging open at different angles. Some had human teeth, some seemed to have shark teeth, some were filled with jagged spikes that didn’t look like teeth at all and were too big for the mouth to ever close. But they didn’t stop there. They were less dense, but there were more mouths spread across the rest of its body too. Three on its chest, one in the inside of its right arm, one on the left shoulder. Probably more that I didn’t see right away.

As I stood there frozen, one of the mouths on its face started to speak in a perfect copy of Charity’s voice. “Bravery, stupidity. Hate to break it to you, kiddo, but they’re the same thing.”

Something inside me snapped. Whatever that thing was, the anger and the fear inside me both agreed on one thing: I had to protect myself. I raised my stick, adjusted my grip to be as firm as I could get it, and ran towards it. Stupid thing to do, but it seemed to catch the monster off guard, because it didn’t get out of the way in time. I brought the stick down with all my strength on its disgusting head.

Then at the last possible moment, its right arm jerked up like it was a puppet being pulled on a string, and smashed the stick from my hands. I felt the impact all the way up my arms, felt a shock of pain in my hands. I knew that if I looked, I would see blood there, bits of skin getting ripped off with the stick as it went flying.

Before I had time to even realise what had happened, it knocked me over with a swing from a freakily flexible leg, and I was on the ground again with leaves and dirt in my mouth. I tried to scramble away, but before I could move more than an inch, its foot came down on my chest and pinned me in place.

The mouth on its shoulder spoke in Grace’s voice. “There’s no need for that. Show some respect for the dead, please.”

During everything, there was one detail I hadn’t consciously noticed. Every mouth on the thing had thin, cruel lips, and either teeth or something tooth-like. What they didn’t have was tongues. But as the thing leaned over me, the largest mouth, a vertical slash down the centre of its face, opened up. From inside that one, dozens of long tongues snaked out, all dripping with drool, and each one stretched over to lick the lips of one of the other mouths on its body, some even winding around its torso to reach some point on its sides or back.

I had no breath left to scream. All I could do was close my eyes as hard as I could and hope this was all somehow a terrible nightmare.